HISTORICAL TIMELINE OF LANDSCAPE DESIGN

EFFORTS BY: SAHIL MATHURSUBMITTED TO: AR. RAKTIM SAHA

AR. SHRUTI S. HIPPATGAONKAR

GARDENS

The etymology of the word gardening refers to enclosure.

A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the display, cultivation, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The garden can incorporate both natural and man-made materials. The most common form today is known as a residential garden, but the term garden has traditionally been a more general one. Zoos, which display wild animals in simulated natural habitats, were formerly called zoological gardens. Western gardens are almost universally based on plants, with garden often signifying a shortened form of botanical garden.

Royal gardens of Reggia di Caserta, Italy

A kaiyu-shiki or strolling Japanese garden

A garden were mainly used for aesthetic, functional, and recreational, religious purposes • Cooperation with nature • Plant cultivation • Garden-based learning • Observation of nature • Bird- and insect-watching • Reflection on the changing seasons • Relaxation • Family dinners on the terrace • Children playing in the garden • Reading and relaxing in the hammock • Maintaining the flowerbeds • Pottering in the shed • Basking in warm sunshine • Escaping oppressive sunlight and heat • Growing useful produce • Flowers to cut and bring inside for indoor beauty • Fresh herbs and vegetables for cooking • RELIGIOUS

REASONS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF GARDENS

Gardening Landscaping

Definition The practice of growing plants The design and construction of gardens outdoors or indoors. and outdoor areas.

Practiced Can be done by anyone Mostly professionals and landscape architects, but can be done by anyone with a keen interest and basic knowledge.

Purpose Hobby, interest. Designed to achieve a desired aesthetic – purpose built.

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Gardening and Landscaping are home improvement techniques that center around plants, rocks and enhancing the natural beauty of a home in general.

Gardening is the practice of growing plants and can range from tending to a single plant to an entire garden with a variety of plants. It involves growing and caring for plants either in pots or in the ground.

Landscaping is a more professional way of gardening in its design and in the construction of ponds, sculpture or topiaries. Landscape design is the art of organizing and enriching outdoor space with plants and structures for aesthetic and/or practical purposes. Large scale projects could include public gardens or recreational areas. Gardening includes such activities as pest control whereas landscaping is more concerned with aesthetics. However, many landscaping companies include gardening services.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GARDENING AND LANDSCAPING

Cultures attempted to re-create or express in their built landscapes the sacred meanings and spiritual significance of natural sites and phenomena. People altered the landscape to try to understand and/or honour the mysteries of nature. Early “landscape design” elaborated on humankind’s intuitive impulse to dig and to mound.

Our ancestors constructed earthworks, raised stones, and marked the ground, leaving traces of basic shapes and axial alignments. The purpose or function of many of these spaces is still conjecture.

Cultural values shifted in later antiquity with the advent of philosophical systems based on a human being’s capacity for deductive reasoning. People looked for rational explanations for nature’s mysteries. The ancient Greeks respected nature as the sanctuary of the Gods, but equally valued the human domain. Their focus on the role of the individual in relationship to the larger community fostered democratic ideals that were revealed in architecture, in urban form, and in the consideration of the landscape as a place of civic responsibility.

The illustrative chronology presented in this chapter is organized thematically, as follows:

• Cosmological Landscapes characterises prehistoric earthwork sand patterns.

• Ancient Gardens describes early parks and villas.

• Landscape and Architecture illustrates temple grounds, buildings, and important site plans.

• Genius Loci depicts sacred landscape Spaces.

PREHISTORY TO 6th CENTURY

Around 8,000 years ago, complex social systems began to emerge simultaneously in South and

Central America, in Egypt and the Middle East, and in India and Asia. Early civilizations established similar ways of communicating with the sacred spirits inherent in nature. As cultures advanced and humans gained more control over the natural world, we organized the landscape for physical and spiritual comfort. The idea of the garden as a managed pleasure ground evolved from the simple enclosed hunting grounds of Europe and Asia. In ancient Greece and Rome, a new trust in human logic resulted in the substitution of anthropomorphic deities for nature spirits. Sacred structures soon replaced sacred landscapes.

An AXIS MUNDI is a symbolic line that extends from the sky to the underworld with the earth at its center. Trees, mountains, pyramids, and earth mounds might all be considered axes mundi.

An EQUINOX is the day the sun crosses the equator, marking days and nights of equal length. The vernal (spring) equinox is March 20; the autumnal equinox is September 23.

GENIUS LOCI refers to the unique spiritual force inherent in a place.

OTIUM is the Roman concept of leisure afforded by a natural setting. It is exemplified by the idea of a country villa.

A POLIS is an ancient Greek city-state. The mountainous topography and island geog- raphy of Greece promoted the formation of indepen- dent city-states.

A SOLSTICE is the furthest point the sun reaches in the sky. The summer solstice on June 21 is the longest day of the year; the winter sol- stice on December 21 is the shortest day of the year.

TEMENOS is the Greek word for a delimited sacred precinct.

TOPOS is Aristotle’s philoso- phy of place as defined by specific natural features.

EXAMPLES OF COSMOLOGICAL LANDSCAPE

c. 3200 BCE NEW GRANGE, IRELANDThe circular passage tomb at New Grange is over 250 feet wide and contains three recessed chambers. On the winter solstice, the sun rises through a clerestory above the entryway, illuminating the central chamber. A curbstone carved with triple-spiral motifs marks the entryway.

2950 BCE–1600 BCE STONEHENGE, ENGLAND Built by different groups of people at different times, this particular site on the Salisbury plain in southwest England evolved from an earthen embankment, to a wooden structure, to the stone circles we recognize to- day. A circular ditch and bank (or “henge”), about 330 feet in diameter, marked the first phase of construc- tion. Extant postholes within the circle indicate the position of a wooden structure from about 2600 BCE. The standing stones date from subsequent centuries. All the shapes open to the northeast, framing sunrise on the summer solstice.

Woodhenge, located about 2 miles from Stonehenge, was a timber circle of roughly the same diameter that marked a burial site dating from the Neolithic era. Sunrise on the summer solstice aligned with its entryway.

LEY LINES, ENGLAND Some people believe that Great Britain and continental Europe are marked with a network of straight lines that connect geographic features and sacred sites through underlying paths of energy within the earth

EXAMPLES OF ANCIENT GARDENS

1380 BCE TOMB OF NEBAMUN, THEBES The gardens depicted on the walls of wealthy Egyptian officials are an important primary source of information about the ancient Egyptian landscape. Shown here is an ordered arrangement of specific plants around a rectangular basin stocked with fish.

2500 BCE–612 BCE MESOPOTAMIAN HUNTING PARKSWritten accounts describe the large enclosed parks of the Sumerians, Babylonians, and Assyrians as being stocked with exotic plants and animals—evidence of early management of the landscape. The Epic of Gilgamesh described the ancient Sumerian city of Uruk as being composed of equal parts city,

garden, and field.2

546 BCE PASARGADAE, PERSIA The imperial capital of Cyrus the Great was described by ancient Greeks and Romans as having a geometric division of space defined by water and trees, an early example of the four-square pattern later associated with “paradise” gardens. Existing ruins show the close relationship of buildings and gardens and the decorative use of water. Gardens provided visual and climatic

comfort, not spaces for active use.3

EXAMPLES OF LANDSCAPE AND ARCHITECTURE

1400 BCE MORTUARY TEMPLE OF HATSHEPSUT, DEIR EL-BAHRI, EGYPT Dramatically sited at the base of a cliff on the west bank of the Nile River, Queen Hatshepsut’s tomb comprised a series of monumental terraces and colonnades symmetrically organized around a processional axis. Tomb paintings show frankincense and myrrh trees imported from Somalia; archeological evidence confirms the presence of exotic vegetation on the terraces

460 BCE ACROPOLIS, ATHENS, GREECE A sacred hilltop site since the early Neolithic period, the acropolis was once the location of a Mycenaean fortress. It remains symbolic of Classical Greek civilization and the architecture of democracy. Following the war with Persia, the Athenian statesman Pericles undertook a major campaign to restore the city and rebuild its temples. The Parthenon dates from this era and represents the Doric order—a proportioning system based on the length and width of the column style.6 The Panathenaic Way marked the route from the city gates to the acropolis.

200 BCE ATHENIAN AGORAThe agora was the civic heart of Athens, where people gathered to conduct personal business and participate in municipal affairs. Tracing the use and development of this open space over the centuries frames an informative picture of Greek culture during the Archaic (c. 750–c. 480 BCE), Classical (c. 500–323 BCE), and Hellenistic (323–146 BCE) periods. The shaping of public space became more self-conscious.7

EXAMPLES OF GENIUS LOCII

The Ganges

More than 1,500 miles long, the Ganges River is believed to be the sacred river of salvation by Hindus. The riverside city of Varanasi became the capital of the Kashi kingdom

in the 6th century BCE and remains a particularly holy place of worship in northern India. The riverbank is lined with temples, shrines, and steps, called ghats.

563–483 BCE BODHI TREE, INDIA According to Buddhist tradition, Gautama Buddha received Enlightenment under a Bodhi tree. The tree was revered by Buddhists as a holy shrine and remains a sacred pilgrimage site.

6th to 15th CENTURY

The term “Middle Ages” loosely applies to a period from the 6th to the 15th centuries, when cultural ad- vancement in western Europe was disrupted by the decline of Roman imperialism to when the power struc- tures of antiquity were replaced by the humanist ideologies of the Renaissance. But while progress in western Europe paused, other cultures continued to thrive. We use a similar time frame of roughly 900 years to examine not only the landscape traditions of medieval Europe, but also the great gardens of China, Japan, and Islamic Spain. During these nine centuries, enclosed gardens shut out the uncertain dangers of the surround- ing landscape. Medieval gardens can be understood as metaphorical constructions, representative of a culture’s changing perceptions of nature.

CHRONOLOGY

CHRONOLOGY

The gardens examined in this chapter responded to a wide range of environmental and cultural conditions, but despite their dif- ferent contexts, they expressed a similar desire to create areas of significance through the functional and aesthetic modifica- tion of nature.

During the Middle Ages, nature was largely uncontrollable, and political order was unstable. Whether for protection or defense, to mitigate forces of nature, or to create a more perfect representation of nature, medieval gardens were enclosed. The act of enclosing space creates a realm distinct from its surroundings; a locus amoenus that in the Middle Ages often symbolized an idea of paradise.

UTILITY

The medieval cloister is an embodiment of utilitarian geometry. A simple square bounded by an arcade becomes an ambulato- ry to facilitate prayer. A square, subdivided by raised planting beds, becomes a living encyclopedia of herbs and flowers.

CONTRAST

A small plot of plea- sure amid a landscape of labor—the carefully tended pleasance is set in opposition to its untamed surroundings.

SCALE

The Moorish courtyard is an outdoor living room—human-scaled open space defined by architecture. The tran- sition between inside and outside is medi- ated by architectural elements; porticos and loggias provide sec- ondary thresholds.

BALANCE

The Chinese gardenis a microcosm of nature where inherent forces are balanced visually, symbolically, and experientially. An intuitive equilibrium is created between rock and water, solid and void, word and image.

APPROPRIATION

Shakkei is the principle of “borrowed” scenery. The landscape beyond a garden’s borders

is appropriated to become a visual com- ponent of Japanese gardens.

15th century was an age of exploration—a period of expansion and cultural advancement that proceeded at a different pace, however, across the world. New discoveries and new lands reshaped medieval worldviews. Europe emerged as a world power, with Italy at the center of early Renaissance thought. The new merchant

class challenged aristocratic power structures and church authority. But the desire for economic hegemony led to the exploitation of many cultures, particularly those in the Americas and Africa.

As horizons broadened, gardens became places to contemplate nature, not escape from it. Garden prototypes es- tablished during the Middle Ages reached maturity in the 15th century. The Zen garden became the ultimate expres- sion of kare sansui in Japan; the chahar bagh epitomized Islamic garden form; and the Italian villa evolved as the physical representation of a philosophical ideal.

15th CENTURY

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15th CENTURY

Intellectual horizons expanded along with political territories in the 15th century. The landscape became manageable as horticul- tural practices improved and designers better comprehended site planning principles. Landscape spaces were ordered in service to human desires: as aids to meditation, as places of repose, and as signifiers of an idealized agrarian model.

REDUCTION

Tray landscapes elimi- nate the unessential to create a powerful minimalist aesthetic.

ABSTRACTION

Kare sansui gardens express the charac- teristics of rivers and streams using a selec- tive language of stone and sand.

HIERARCHY

Nested geometries concentrate power at the center, as illus- trated by the plan of the Forbidden City.

SYMMETRY

Perpendicular axes subdivide space in a chahar-bagh, or four- square garden.

PROPORTION

According to Alberti, the parts must equal the whole—nothing can be added or taken away without destroy- ing the integrity of the design.

16th CENTURY

Cumulative changes in the 16th century marked the gradual transition to the modern era. Political power was consolidated across many parts of the globe as individual countries formed distinct national identities. Defini- tive monarchies emerged in Europe and England; Japan was unified during the reigns of three successive gener-

als; and the Mughal empire spread across parts of Central Asia and India. The Reformation and Counter-Reformation marked a period of commitment to ideals in western Europe. Individual creative pursuits were valued by society; art- ists gained prestige. All these factors influenced the design of the built landscapes examined in this chapter.

For Europeans, the 15th century was a time to celebrate the rediscovery of nature. In the 16th century, nature be- came constructed. The idea of the garden as a “third nature” was implicit in more defined styles. Rome was the new authority for Renaissance gardening, art, and architecture. Italian styles spread across the continent and beyond.

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16th CENTURY

In the 16th century people began to call into question the many assumptions they had made about the way the world worked. Creative forms flourished. Renaissance design principles became manifest in Italian art, architecture, and gardens. Other cul- tures claimed the landscape in significant ways through similar uses of geometry, water, and the idealization of nature.

AXIAL SYMMETRY

Italian Renais- sance gardens were organized along central lines of sight, creating a geometric ordering of space.

OCCUPYING SPACE

Timurid and Mughal gardens provided spaces for passive enjoyment of the landscape, either on Persian carpets or on flat, elevated platforms called chabutras.

BOUNDARY

French gardens were edged by moats, canals, and galleried walkways, defining ordered ground planes within an untamed landscape.

TRANSITION

The sequence and progression of space in a Japanese tea garden represents a psychological as well as physical transi- tion.

HARMONY

Palladio’s work dem- onstrates how all parts correspond to each other through harmonic ratios.

17th CENTURY

From a European perspective, the 17th century is often described as the beginning of the Age of Reason, a period when advances in scientific knowledge challenged beliefs in religious doctrine and Renaissance order. Nature was shaped according to human will, and typically by royal privilege.

Massive colonization of the Americas took place in the 1600s. Jamestown, Virginia, was founded by the Eng- lish in 1607; Quebec was settled by the French in 1608; Sante Fe was developed by the Spanish in 1609; and New Amsterdam was claimed by the Dutch in 1624. As settlements expanded, native populations suffered and ancient lifeways all but disappeared.

The idea of extension applied not only to geopolitical influence: gardens merged into the landscape with vistas to endless horizons. Large-scale views were part of the drama and idea of mobility that characterized Baroque styles. The earth was no longer the static center of the universe but part of a system in motion around the sun. Politically and culturally, emphasis shifted to France, where the garden became a venue for spectacle, employed as a symbol of the absolutism of the Sun King.

Some of the world’s most illustrious gardens, such as the Taj Mahal, Katsura Imperial Villa, and Versailles, were created in the 17th century, and are discussed in this chapter.

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Straight lines! In the 17th century, the landscape was ordered by geometries that expressed the power and authority of humans over nature. Whether through monumental axes or lines of sight, as chahar baghs or with borrowed scenery, gardens extended into the landscape, literally and figuratively.

SHAKKEI

Distant landscapes are “borrowed” and incorporated into the pictorial composition of Japanese stroll gardens. Views are framed by vegetation, and garden elements strategically placed in the foreground help place the viewer in the scene.

HIDE AND REVEAL

Space unfolds incre- mentally as various focal points capture the viewer’s atten- tion and imagination in the Japanese stroll garden.

SUBDIVISION

Mughal gardens are characterized by the four-square paradise form. The recursive subdivision of the four-square geometry creates interesting patterns and modula- tions of space.

EXTENSION

French gardens of the 17th century were projected into the landscape through monumental axes. Vistas merged with the horizon.

ILLUSION

Perspective was manipulated in Italian Baroque gardens to create theatrical ef- fects and a sense of mystery.

17th CENTURY

18th CENTURY

The great advances in science and technology that defined the Enlightenment changed the way people viewed their place in the world. The spirit of inquiry extended to the contestation of firmly held beliefs in social structures and political systems. Scientific progress shed new light on social relations. The rise of the middle class as an economic

and political force brought about the collapse of the ancien régime. Philosophers like Rousseau and Voltaire laid the intel- lectual ground for change. The Scientific Revolution coincided with the American Revolution, the French Revolution, and the so-called revolution of taste in England.

England became the force that shaped garden history in the 18th century. The English “landscape” garden created a new lens through which we see nature. The influence of Chinese garden styles on English trends is examined in this chapter, as is the effect of the landscape garden on early American landscape design.

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Curves, realized as sweeping lawns, serpentine lakes, and billowing trees, defined the “line of beauty” in the 18th-century English garden. Here, “landscape” became an adjective descriptive of an enlightened vision of uncorrupted nature—the garden. The tradi- tion of the pastoral aesthetic as embodied in the English landscape garden influenced early American gardens and continues today in parks, campuses, and residential developments. The relationship between art and nature in 18th century Chinese gardens and its impact on English styles was also examined in this chapter.

FRAMING

Garden sceneswere viewed through intricate latticework windows and screens in Chinese gardens. Trees framed views of fields and hills in English gardens.

ALLUSION

Both English and Chinese gardens contained visual references to literary passages. Naming and inscribing scenes assured common interpretations.

NARRATIVE

The heroic or patriotic theme of an English garden was made ex- plicit through statuary and built form.

VARIETY

Picturesque gardens contained contrasting forms, textures, and lines.

OBSERVATION

Plants, landscapes, scenery—all of nature was scrutinized and classified during the Enlightenment.

18th CENTURY

The Enlightenment left in its wake a new concept of time and space. The Industrial Revolution eroded agrarian society. People moved into cities to supply the labor force required by factories. Urban popula- tions swelled, causing concern for public welfare.

Industrial production defined the social, economic, and political order of the western world in the 19th century. The unquestioned belief in technology prompted a backlash: Romanticism became the antidote to the ills of mechanized society. For the middle class, emotion triumphed over reason, imagination was prized more than cultivated scholar- ship, and nature was elevated as the source of inspiration. Society believed sensitivity to natural phenomena and appreciation of natural beauty to be morally and spiritually uplifting.

The 19th-century landscape was urban, public, and Romantic.

19th CENTURY

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The Industrial Revolution brought widespread change to the landscape and to society. The shift from an agricultural to an indus- trial economy created a new class of low-wage workers in European and American cities. Social reformers lobbied to improve the living conditions of the urban poor by providing public parks. The aesthetic language of the English landscape garden was adopted as a model for the parks, and persists in the Western imagination as an icon of nature. The physical and social structures that have come to define city life took shape in the 19th century.

The Romantic sentiment of the 19th century contributed to a conception of nature as being restorative. People understood the political, economic and social value of the landscape, and campaigned to access its benefits. By the end of the century, landscape architecture was established as a profession in America.

19th CENTURY

ACCESSIBILITY

An awareness of social factors is criti- cal to a successful design. The first public parks opened in the 19th century.

IDENTITY

Space becomes place when it has iden- tifiable character. Alphand’s design vocabulary defined Second Empire Paris

TRANSFORMATION

Landscapes, both built and natural, are capable of altering emotional states. Transcendental philos- ophers helped create a wilderness myth about the American West.

OBSERVATION

Urban environments create opportunities for social exchange. Parisian boulevards accommodated a vari- ety of interactions.

COLLABORATION

Design is a collab- orative and iterative process. A multi- disciplinary team of experts assembled to design the Chicago World’s Fair.

ver the course of a century, the world saw the biggest wars ever fought, the fastest speeds ever achieved, an enormous growth in population and migration, a revolution in manufacturing, the great- est economic catastrophe and recovery, the formation of “superpowers,” and massive devastation to

the Earth in terms of species extinction and climate change. The magnitude of change is almost incompre- hensible. The institutions and foundations that structured and supported human life advanced, but not with- out consequence. While communication and transportation systems seemingly shrunk the world, the distance between industrialized societies and developing nations remained great.

Western culture reached new heights of complexity in the 20th century. Influences on the built landscape were tremendously diverse. No single style or approach represents the age. The development of the profession of landscape architecture accelerated in the early 20th century, particularly in America. Significant movements that affected American landscape design include the Country Place Era, the City Beautiful Movement, Mod- ernism, Land Art, Environmentalism, Postmodernism and Ecological Design. The following chapter is organized according to these themes, through a discussion of key people and representative projects.

20th CENTURY

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20th CENTURY

New resources, technologies, modes of transportation, and communication systems transformed the way people interacted with each other and with the natural world in the 20th century. The ideals expressed in the landscape reflected these changing values.

Landscape design in the 20th century was subject to a variety of influences. Space became very architectonic. Trends in the art world were interpreted by landscape architects. Analyses of site conditions and user needs determined the form and function of the modernist landscape. Postmodernist designers searched to rebuild a traditional sense of community. The so-called green revolution focused the profession on ecological design.

UTILITY

Form determined by functionality makes users’ needs a priority.

TRUTH

Honest design ex- presses the inherent quality of a material or a site.

CORRESPONDENCE

Beauty results from an awareness of the synchronicity of time, place, and idea.

com- ponent of beauty.

ORIGINALITY

Innovation results from rejecting preconceived ideas and being open to all possibilities.

INTEGRITY

A design is complete in itself when it acknowl- edges the moral com- ponent of beauty.

Everything depends on an unforeseeable historic continuity. But if we succeed in developing our culture while continuing to respect our past, we have a chance of preserving it.

—Stephen Jay Gould (2000)

C

ultural trends have become linked to the marketplace; 21st-

century culture is mobile, networked, and instantly available. The fashionable trend at the moment is “green”; what started as a countercultural movement has now become mainstream. Everything is green. Sustainability is a buzzword. One hopes that this trend will be

permanently instilled into the global consciousness and become the origin of all design.

The early modernists were optimistic about the potential for industrial materials and methods to offer promise for the future. Designers are again hopeful that technology can help reestablish a harmonic balance with nature. The projects described in this chapter demonstrate that art and science can combine to create beautiful and ecologically responsible design.

21st CENTURY

21st CENTURY

Thus our visual romp through landscape design history comes to a rest, as a whole new set of challenges faces the 21st cen- tury designer. In the first decade of this century, it is difficult to judge which of the more recent projects will survive the test of time. Go forth and plant the future.

DESIGN PRINCIPLES

REDUCE

REUSE

RECYCLE

Whatever befalls the Earth, befalls the children of the Earth. CHIEF SEATTLE